Abstract
Cotton wastes from cotton yarn spinning mills has been utilized as an alternative resource for the production of Microcrystalline Cellulose (MCC), an important ingredient in food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical industries, etc. The main processes conducted including cotton wastes sorting, cotton lint pretreatment, and alpha cellulose hydrolysis. In this study, several parameters on pretreatment and hydrolysis were varied in order to produce MCC which characteristics were evaluated comparing to Avicel PH-101, a commercial MCC product. Pretreatment was carried out using 17.5% alkali (w/v) at temperature 80°C for 30 minutes, followed by a bleaching process at 5-30% H2O2 (v/v). The hydrolysis reaction was done using 1.25 M sulfuric acid, at temperature 80°C and 96°C for 2-4 hours. Results showed that pretreatment process with alkali for 30 minutes followed by a bleaching process with 5% H2O2 (v/v) was able to isolate 87% alpha cellulose with 99.98% of purity. The yields of MCC powders produced from acid hydrolysis of alpha cellulose at 96°C for 2, 3, and 4 hours were 74.6%, 70.2%, and 42.8%, respectively. According to the SEM, infrared spectra, and XRD results, the process conducted was applicable to produce MCC that physically and chemically similar to the characteristics of Avicel PH-101.
Highlights
Cotton fiber is still a famous textile material for clothing in tropical regions such as Indonesia
[17] the preparation in the study requires more steps and incorporates more chemicals in order to isolate the alpha cellulose and synthesize the microcrystalline cellulose. This could be a drawback according to industrial point of view and a waste recovery purpose. This study proposes another method for Microcrystalline Cellulose (MCC) preparation from cotton yarn spinning mills waste which employs less steps and chemicals
The fine MCC powder was obtained as a result of acid hydrolysis reaction of alpha cellulose followed by filtration, washing, and a drying process with oven and spray dryer
Summary
Cotton fiber is still a famous textile material for clothing in tropical regions such as Indonesia. Along with the increasing demand of clothing textile from cotton, the cotton yarn spinning industry was still left out up to 11% of its raw material as wastes in the form of short cotton fibers [1]. Some of them could not be recycled back to the spinning mills due to a down-graded fiber quality in term of fiber length, strength, micronaire, and uniformity. Results showed that according to The Classification of Cotton 2018 (USDA), both wastes obtained from open-end and ring yarn spinning mills mostly classified as very weak to weak in term of fiber strength and low to very low in term of fiber uniformity. A study of cotton fiber wastes recycling for both conventional ring-spun and open end-rotor yarn spinning found that blend yarns with pneumafil wastes resulted with better yarn qualities. The most deteriorated yarn properties caused by the usage of waste fiber were yarn unevenness in ring-spun yarns and tensile properties in rotor yarns [2]
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